Fuck. Got stuck in a dangerous, post-modern technology VORTEX today. My old pal Felix told me in an email how he didn’t need to ask me how I was or what I was up to because he’d read all about it in my diary (this one, vortex fans). He also said that it was only a matter of time before it was “published in a baghad blogger style”. Writing back I related to him a tale of how I’d recently been having a slightly superficial conversation with an old acquaintance when he suddenly interrupted my stream of banalities to tell me that he knew all about what I was saying from my diary, at which point the companion he was with (who I didn’t know) nodded and said “yeah, hur hur”. This had made me feel odd, like I’d been caught out having an inner life or something, or that my real life was somehow trivial, awkward and fake, and I felt a queasy sense of guilt. Felix responded:

“That situation you mentioned sounds funny – you should write about it in your diary. Then again, that might create some kind of dangerous, post-modern new technology vortex. And no-one needs one of those.”

Then, because I’m a nimnum and it was only last month that I was asking another friend what a blog actually was, I asked Felix who this baghad blogger was. He said:

“Hey Pete – surely you’ve heard of the baghad blogger? It’s the online diary of this guy who had a bag that he lost one day, and it casts this dark shadow over his everyday existence. Funny and tragic all at the same time”.

And I thought: oh, that sounds interesting, so I looked it up on Google. There were a few hits about a “Baghdad blogger” writing in Iraq, plus plenty of misspelled versions of the same, and quite a bit of speculation as to whether he in fact existed, but nothing about the poor guy with the lost bag. Funnily enough I used to have the piss taken out of me at school for being bagless, because I used to carry so much paraphernalia in the way of walkmans, tapes, sunglasses, notebooks, bike locks etc that several times I forgot to bring my bag to school. My African classmates used to think this was about a dozy as you can get, and yet they are wrong, as I think you can tell I have begun to prove. So yes, I identified with the chap with the lost bag. I imagined it as a glorious metaphor in an ongoing work of genius by some hidden charismatic, and I like that kind of thing. So then I told Felix I was struggling to get the full gen on the baghad blogger, and he wrote:

“That thing about the baghad blogger was ironic of course. Perhaps your response was also ironic. I fear a vortex may develop here also. But there is someone called the BAGHDAD BLOGGER who writes an online diary from Baghdad of all places.”

So, there you are. Pete UM: online prat. I told Felix off for making me look thick and if there wasn’t a baghad blogger there bloody should have been one. Whilst I’ve been typing this, he’s produced the following by way of reparation:

“Weds 17th Jan

Woke early this morning: the digital display of my bedside Casio reading 5:03 AM. Felt exhausted in body and spirit, a wave of nausea creeping over me. Stomach cramps. Rushed to the bathroom and pissed. That bloody bag – I miss that bloody bag so much. I’ll never have a bag like that bag that I had. My life without it is a sodding joke.”

Right, better stop now or we’ll all be fucked by the VORTEX. Watch out people.